


these are the days that bind us

by meregalaxiesandgods



Category: The Cadet of Tildor -Alex Lidell
Genre: Epic Friendship, Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 16:51:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21274517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meregalaxiesandgods/pseuds/meregalaxiesandgods
Summary: Renee and Sasha, through the years.





	these are the days that bind us

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! If you're reading this, I'm impressed. Hope you enjoy. :)

_eleven._

Renee de Winter arrived at the Academy in the final days of a leaden summer, with her mother still warm in her grave.  


She came alone, for her father had work back at the estate that couldn’t be postponed, and there was no one to spare from the harvest for an escort. The Academy’s Registrar peered at her over his great oak desk; Renee stared back, refusing to be made to feel small. She’d crossed over a hundred miles in three days on horseback—this was the easy part of the journey.  


Her new roommate was already in the room when Renee opened the door. She stood amidst a teetering pile of bags and books, struggling to pull her sheets over the fourth corner of the bed. As Renee entered, she turned only partly, and spoke from over one shoulder.  


“Hello,” she said, “I’m Sasha. It’s lovely to meet you. I’d give you my hand, but I’m afraid if I let go, the whole thing will spring apart.”  


Everything about Sasha was bright: cornsilk-yellow hair, pearly white teeth, eyes like blue stars. Renee set down her luggage and went to help the other girl. “My name’s Renee.”  


They tugged the sheets into place together, Renee holding down one side while Sasha wrestled with the other. Sasha smiled when they finished, flushed and still so bright. “I’d never have been able to finish that by myself,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here.”  


“Me too,” said Renee without thinking, and found only later that it was true.

_thirteen._  


The Academy hosted a tournament for its students every year. The Magistrate cadets held debates, the Mages competed to outdo each other with feats of magical prowess, and the Servant cadets fought on the sands of the open-roofed salle, struggling to make each other yield at the point of a sword.  


Renee attended every debate Sasha participated in, sandwiched between a horde of cousins on one side and overly enthusiastic parents on the other.  


When Renee competed in the salle, she had an audience of one. But Sasha cheered loud enough for three, and seeing her face in the stands was worth the absence of all the others.

  


_fourteen._  


“I mean,” said Sasha, “what’s the worst that could happen?”  


“He tells me he hates me and never wants to see my face again,” Renee answered immediately.  


Sasha gave her a look.  


“What? It could happen.”  


“It won’t. And even if it does, it’s not the end of the world.”  


“But he’s so handsome, Sasha, and so kind and smart and funny—”  


Sasha put down the small bottle of polish she was using to paint Renee’s fingernails an eye-searing shade of red. She picked up a pillow from the edge of the bed and hit her friend smartly across the face with it. “And you” _–-thwap—_“are brave” _-–thwap—_“and beautiful” _-–thwap—_“and so out of his league—”  


Renee snatched the pillow from Sasha’s grasp when Sasha went in for another blow, and a small scuffle ensued. Renee tipped Sasha off the bed, rolled her up in the sheets that had been dragged off the bed by the skirmish, and sat both herself and the pillow triumphantly on top of Sasha’s chest.  


Sputtering with both laughter and indignation, Sasha fought back without a hope of winning. Sasha spent her days in libraries, studying law and language, twisting the intricacies of policy around her clever fingers like cat’s cradles. When she graduated the Academy in three years, she would wear a Magistrate’s robes. But Renee would take a Servant’s—a soldier’s—a killer’s—garb, and she trained accordingly. Renee was strong and quick and bold; her hands were calloused and her muscles firm. Such a contrast to Sasha, who felt soft and awkward next to the blade Renee’s body had become.  


It was hard to breathe buried under layers of her own bedsheets and her best friend’s weight, but Sasha was reluctant to push away. Her parents, her teachers, her classmates: they all treated her like she was something breakable—King’s cousin, a princess of the realm. None of them dared touch her.  


Only Renee treated her like a friend, touched her like one; slung her arm over Sasha’s shoulder and held her hand in the hallways, tossed her into the deep end of the lake while Sasha shrieked protest.  


It was something Sasha valued, desperately, secretly, more than all the dresses in her closet and the jewelry in her drawers.  


_If I could keep you_, Sasha thought, looking up into Renee’s mischief-edged grin, _I’d give all the rest of it away_.  


  
  
_fourteen and a half._  


Night settled on the Academy softly.  


Sasha held Renee’s left hand in her right, put her own left hand on the bony curve of Renee’s waist. “_One_ two three,” she counted out steadily. “And _one_ two three, _one_ two three--"  


They danced over the silent sands of the salle, emptied of people at this late hour. Dancing was something Sasha loved, taught to her by her mother; something Renee’s own mother never had the chance to teach.  


“This one’s called the waltz,” Sasha informed her friend. “The next one’s called the tango. I think you’ll like it.”

  


_sixteen._  


The bruises faded within a week.  


Months later, the dreams still lingered.  


Renee sat up in bed, bracing herself on her elbows. Across the darkened room, in the other bed, Sasha lay curled on her side. One of her hands pressed over her mouth; the other clutched convulsively at the thin fabric of her nightgown. The moonlight filtering in through the open window caught the shadows and fractured them, silvering the honey-blonde of Sasha’s hair, crystallizing the tears on her cheeks.  


“I woke you,” Sasha said, still hoarse from sleep and screaming.  


Renee shrugged a shoulder. “I went to bed early. I’ve had enough rest.” This was a lie; Renee never had enough rest, especially not recently, not after what had happened, after the kidnapping and the riot and the almost-war and the fire and the other, worse riot.  


Sasha swung her legs off the side of the bed, dragging shaking hands over her face. Renee could read her friend’s tension in the way her toes curled and uncurled under her pink silk hem. Princesses, apparently, were too well-bred to have obvious tics.  


“You would feel safer,” Renee muttered, “and sleep better, too, if the man who kidnapped you was behind bars instead of walking free.” She tried, and failed, to keep the bitterness from her tone.  


Sasha’s hands stilled. It was an old, tired argument between them. “The man’s a Viper, Renee, he’s not going to spend any time in any prison. My cou—the King granted comprehensive pardons to all Vipers after the events in Atham. It was a—necessary decision. A clever decision.”  


She sounded very much like she was trying to convince herself.  


Renee stuck her chin out mulishly, deciding that if Sasha would not defend herself, Renee would do it for her. “It was an unfair decision. What of justice? For you, for Atham’s innocent. There has to be a line somewhere.”  


“The line is ‘not causing civil war.’ If Lysian hadn’t pardoned the Vipers, Atham would’ve fallen, Princess Claire would’ve remained in enemy hands—”  


“And you wouldn’t be having nightmares,” Renee snapped. “Because you’d know you were safe, with your kidnapper facing justice.”  


Sasha gave a bitter, bitten-off laugh. The sound was alien, coming from her. It should have been brighter, should have been lighter, should have filled the room with her joy. “Lysian made the right decision, Renee. A king can’t afford to value one person over the good of the Kingdom, cousin or not.”  


Renee pressed her lips together. “There’s another way. A way to preserve the good of the Kingdom and give you peace of mind.”  


It was an idea Renee held tight in the quiet moments, poring over every last detail, planning, perfecting.  
“Renee, don’t—”  


“I’ll simply take matters into my own hands. As per the terms of the pardon, Lysian swore that none of the Crown’s agents would take action against the Vipers, but I’m not going to be the Crown’s agent, at least not for another two months, when I graduate and take my oaths. I can do it. All I have to do is find him, and—”  


“And what?” Sasha hissed. “Kill him?” She stood from the bed and began to pace, striding in and out of shadow. “You can’t. You can’t; if you’re caught, Lysian will expel you from the Academy and brand you a traitor. It won’t matter to him that you’re not sworn in for another two months. He’d see it as a betrayal regardless.”  


“Sasha,” said Renee. “If I caught him, it wouldn’t matter what was done to me afterward.”  


And it wouldn’t. Renee was attached to people, more so than to the promises she’d made or the Kingdom she served. She’d chosen Alec over the law, once; chosen Diam over her lifelong ambitions; chosen Savoy over the explicit orders of her commanding officer. It was easy to imagine choosing Sasha, choosing Sasha over her ideals and her oaths and even her own life.  


Loyalty: it was Renee’s fatal flaw, and her saving grace.  


Crossing the room in four long strides, Sasha shoved Renee on the shoulder, pushing her back down onto her pillow. “It would matter to me, you great idiot. You’re my best—only—friend. How d’you think I’d feel, if you got yourself imprisoned or exiled or killed, for me? Never in my life would I ask such a thing of you.”  


“I know,” said Renee. She put her hand over Sasha’s, still resting on her shoulder. “You’d never have to ask at all.”

  


_nineteen._  


“This is a terrible idea.”  


“Yeah. Are you coming?”  


“You’re funny. Of course I’m coming. Move over.”

  


_twenty-one._  


The Mage Registration Act was repealed in the sixth year of King Lysian the Just’s reign, striking down the centuries-old legislation that demanded Mages sign their lives and freedoms away in the name of the greater good.  


The celebrations in the city lasted five days and five nights. Sasha and Renee went out on the fifth night and squeezed themselves into a dark corner of a sticky tavern whose clients and cutlery both had seen better days.  


Renee ordered a glass of the oldest, most potent thing the bartender had on tap. “To absent friends,” she said as she raised the glass, and Sasha knew who she was thinking of—Alec, who was a Mage and a traitor; liar, loved, and lost.  


“To absent friends,” Renee repeated, and took a sip, which she then promptly coughed back up.  


Sasha patted her on the back until the coughing fit passed, smiling wryly. Renee had a bad habit of biting off more than she could chew—or drinking more than she could swallow. She passed Renee a glass of water, and then one of wine. “Perhaps we should start slow.”  


Renee rolled her eyes but accepted the drink. They lifted the glasses in concert and Sasha caught Renee’s gaze over the table. “To us,” she said quietly.  


Renee’s grin glittered in the low light, bright as a blade, lovely as the new dawn. “To us.”

  


_twenty-two._  


The possibility of a hard death on the battlefield was one Renee had always entertained, but never truly believed in. Not until now.  


She lay where she had fallen, staring at the eggshell-blue sky of a day that would likely be her last. Comrades and enemies alike surrounded her on the field, all of them dying or dead. Muzzily, she thought the battle was near its end: she could no longer hear the endless, terrible cacophony of metal on metal, or the shouted orders of hoarse-voiced sergeants.  


As if in a dream, she lifted one hand slowly to cover the wound that had felled her. The long blade still protruded from her midsection, at least three inches of steel buried to her spine.  


A shout from above. Renee opened her eyes without remembering when she’d closed them. A hand took hers in a grip like iron, and through flickering vision, Renee saw blood-streaked blond hair and a Commander’s pin glittering on a leather jacket.  
It was Savoy, and he looked as close to crying as she had ever seen him.  


She knew then that she would die.  


“Don’t worry,” she said. “Don’t worry.” It was not such a terrible thing, to die with honor in defense of one’s home. But the words didn’t come, only blood, bubbling over her lips and spilling down her chin in a rush of red.  


When Renee came to again, she was lying on a clean white cot in the Healer’s tent, surrounded this time not by the dead but by those clinging stubbornly to life. She looked blurrily down at herself, half expecting still to see the wound, the blood, the blade.  


Instead she saw a head full of honey-blonde hair and a blue cloak dulled by the dust of the road. Half in a chair drawn up next to Renee’s cot, half on the cot itself, Sasha slept with one hand clasped loosely around Renee’s wrist.  


In itself, this was not such a strange sight: Sasha had sat at the side of every sick bed Renee had been in since the age of eleven. But Sasha lived in Atham, which was five days’ ride from the border where the battle had taken place, and Renee knew from overhearing the Healers’ chatter that said battle had concluded only two days ago.  


The journey could be done in two days instead of five, Renee supposed, if one left Atham the moment the Mages reported the casualty lists instantly, magically, to every major city in the Kingdom. If one exchanged tired horses for fresh ones at every rest stop on the way. If one didn’t stop through the night, not even once.  


If one cared enough, wanted enough, loved enough, it could be done.  
Renee wrapped her fingers around Sasha’s before closing her eyes again. Her body ached and the wound was a fire lit somewhere below her sternum, but she couldn’t help the small smile that tugged on her lips. _Lucky_, she thought as she drifted off. I am so lucky.

  


_twenty-five._  


Sasha returned to her apartment in the amber light of Atham’s sunset, a week’s work resting heavy on her shoulders. Some days as a Magistrate were good days, and Sasha saw justice done. Other days, she watched the very worst of humanity smile as they walked free. But Sasha refused to be made to feel small; she knew her work was important.  


The door was unlocked when Sasha entered. Renee sat slumped at Sasha’s kitchen table, surrounded by a teetering pile of battered bags and dusty packs, her sheathed sword resting atop it all. She roused when Sasha closed the door, propping her chin on her hand.  


“Hello,” she said. “I’d get up and hug you, but I’m afraid I’d fall asleep on the way there.”  


Sasha set down her case full of files and went to hug her friend, resting her chin on the top of Renee’s head from behind. She both loved and hated when Renee came home from the war: loved to see her friend, alive and well; hated the way Renee seemed just a little different each time. Eyes a little colder, mouth a little tighter, something haunted in the line of her shoulders.  


“I’m making dinner,” Sasha said, disentangling herself. She couldn’t be there for her friend in the chaos and blood of the battlefield, but she could be there for Renee now, in the aftermath.  


Renee smiled, and Sasha felt eased, reminded that everything about Renee was strong: her calloused hands, her tactician’s mind, the courage in her that burned like a fire.  


“I’m glad you’re here,” Renee said.  


“Me too,” said Sasha, and knew it to be true.


End file.
